A holiday trip to Westfield Santa Anita

December 14, 2016, 11:13 PM PST by Parkzer • General

This post is over 9 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.

Now that I live in California, I have the nice benefit of not having to suffer through snowfall every single winter. People who have lived in sunny, warm areas all their lives say that they would love to experience snow sometime, but when they say that, I make sure they are aware that the keyword there is sometime, not every day of the winter.

Either way, it seems like, no matter where you live, people still celebrate the holidays. Now, having grown up in the Chicagoland suburbs where it pours snow every winter, I sort of associate the holiday season, lights, and Christmas trees with snow and freezing cold temperatures, and it makes me feel not so festive. Now that I’m in California where I know I won’t be seeing any snow unless I climb thousands of feet up onto the peak of a mountain, the holidays don’t necessarily have to be the equivalent of suffering. But, that association got drilled into my brain for over two decades, so it’s a little bit difficult to snap out of it right away.

People have lights set up all around the new neighborhood where I live now, as well as out in public as well. I stopped by Westfield Santa Anita yesterday, which is supposedly the biggest mall and shopping center in San Bernardino county, and decided to share some of the festive decorations here with some photographs. The quality isn’t so great because I didn’t go there until the evening and my phone’s camera doesn’t have great low light compensation, but at least you can still see the lights.

I guess I’m a food blogger now

December 13, 2016, 11:49 PM PST by Parkzer • Food

… Okay, not really. I actually feel slightly, marginally bad because all I’ve been doing is posting photos of the stuff I’ve been eating, rather than actually providing quality content. But then again, nobody’s saying that endless photographs of food isn’t quality content.

So this time, I decided to save photos from two restaurants’ worth of visits before posting them.

A handful of days ago, I went to a Thai restaurant called the Seven Seas. I ordered my classic orange chicken dish (which I believe is my favorite method of prepared chicken), in addition to a Crying Tiger, which is a Thai dish that I had never had before.

I requested the Crying Tiger to be cooked medium rare (which I generally do for all meat), but it ended up being closer to medium well. Regardless, I think this is now one of my top favorite meat dishes. I’m generally good at justifying my statements, but for this, I actually have no idea why, but it tasted great. I also like raw onions, and the sauce having chopped raw red onions inside made the whole thing even better.

Today, I went to a different restaurant – a dumpling house closer to the city of Los Angeles. I ordered some dumplings, obviously, but I also ordered some Chinese beef rolls, which is a dish I’ve only had once before. The first time I tried it, the meat tasted a bit overcooked and it was covered in a strong smell of grease (maybe because it was very fried and very greasy), but my friend with whom I went to this restaurant insisted that the beef rolls here were much better.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, as the beef rolls here were also somewhat dry on the inside and dripping grease on the outside.

… At least it made for a good photo opportunity.

Endless blog posts about food

December 6, 2016, 11:45 PM PST by Parkzer • Food

I went back and scrolled through my past handful of blog posts and realized that, out of my seven most recent posts, six of them are about food or some form of hunger:

Going to get food from Chipotle and encountering a brawl
Ed’s tragic experience of eating a late lunch
The affordability of sushi in Illinois
~~Photos of scenes out the window of an airplane~~
Flying first class on an airline is like a mobile restaurant
My first self-grill all-you-can-eat KBBQ experience
The non-affordability of sushi in California

Why break the streak now? Here’s a photo of a filet mignon dish I ordered earlier today at a Vietnamese restaurant.

My friend wanted to get phở with me today. I personally hate burning-hot liquid dishes, so instead, I looked for a more dry dish on their menu, and came across this house special – a Vietnamese-style filet mignon meal for only around US$10.00.

A whole lot more food and a whole lot more value than the sushi I got last night.

The most expensive sushi I’ve ever had

December 5, 2016, 11:57 PM PST by Parkzer • Food

Remember how, two weeks ago, I blogged about how expensive sushi in California is?

I hadn’t had any sushi since that day at the all-you-can-eat buffet, so I searched out a sushi place nearby so I could enjoy some delectable raw fish. I ordered one rainbow roll and one California roll … and the total came out to over US$20.00.

I think I just picked the wrong restaurant. When I did some research on Google Maps and other location review websites, I found some other places around my area that supposedly had much cheaper sushi, but this location happened to be the only one that was open during the late hours at which I went for some sushi. If I had to pay that much for some strips of the finest quality of sashimi, or rich, full, long pillows of nigiri, then I would’ve been less irked by it … but that much just for rolls??

The restaurant seemed to be a mix between a sushi restaurant and a bar. Just from the looks of the interior, it seemed to be an upper-end restaurant, but I still didn’t really expect to pay that much. I’m also pretty sure the “crab” was imitation crab – not that there is anything wrong with imitation crab (or “surimi”), as a lot of restaurants use imitation crab anyway, but it’s just that surimi is significantly cheaper than real crab.

I’m obviously not returning again, but if you’re bleeding money out of your ears (which I am not) (yet), this may just seem like a regular nice restaurant. However, for someone as youthful as me who is trying to save up for my future … it was expensive enough that I decided to write about it.

My first all-you-can-eat self-grill Korean barbecue experience

December 4, 2016, 11:59 PM PST by Parkzer • Food

Just because I’m of Korean ethnicity doesn’t mean I eat KBBQ all the time.

In fact, I actually just had my very first self-grill all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue (KBBQ) experience today.

Back when I was still a resident of Illinois, I lived in the peaceful Chicagoland suburbs where most people are white. Pretty much all the stores were American or European, and there was very little Asian culture represented in my area. I was perfectly fine with this, though – I generally find American- and European-inspired stores to be much cleaner and appealing than Asian stores. I also barely left the house anyway, apart from just going to school, because I liked sitting inside and doing stuff on my computer, so the kinds of stores and restaurants around me didn’t really even matter.

Because of this, I actually didn’t really realize that self-grill all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurants were a thing. Surely, if someone had brought up the concept and asked me about it, I would’ve probably concluded “yes, that seems like something that would exist,” but I had never been to such a restaurant before, and I wasn’t really even interested in it anyway.

Today, I was somewhat forcefully taken to a KBBQ restaurant by a few of my friends. Although I wouldn’t exactly say it was the most amazing experience, I think it’s something I could get used to over time, and once I figure out the strategy behind optimizing just how much food I can get, it could get close to being worth it (although at the current price of somewhere around US$22/person for dinner, I don’t think we got our money’s worth today).

The environment was nice, clean, and modern, even though the photograph of the inside of the restaurant might not necessarily reflect that due to the fact that it was somewhat dark inside. I guess service could’ve been considered “slow,” but I think that is more of a result of us being poor with timing orders, rather than the waiters actually being slow. The taste of the food was pretty good, and it was nice to be able to control the level of “cooked-ness” by seeing the meat right in front of our face and removing it whenever we wanted. I’d presume that cooking is a hassle, but because it was my first time there today, my friends took care of all the cooking.

Apparently this is really popular in the Los Angeles area, so I would assume that I’ll be returning here quite a bit. I perceive ordering at KBBQ as sort of like a game, where I can figure out strategies and micro better in order to optimize food consumption and minimize downtime … maybe I’ll even make a guide one day on how to be an expert KBBQer, once I gather some more first-hand experience.

My first first class airline experience

November 26, 2016, 11:15 PM PST by Parkzer • Flights

Shipping stuff across the entire country is expensive.

So expensive, in fact, that it was actually almost cheaper to pay extra and fly first class from Chicago to Los Angeles to take advantage of all the free checked bags that come along with first class. I think the price difference was actually right around US$50.00, and I was willing to pay that much extra for my very first first class airline experience (something I otherwise would not have done, had it not been for the fact that I would’ve needed to pay extra anyway to a shipping company to send my stuff to California).

So how was it? If it wasn’t for the fact that I very specifically needed those free checked bags (which otherwise would’ve been $25 for the first bag, $35 for the second bag, and $150 for the third bag with American Airlines), then I don’t think it would’ve been worth it. With that being said, the only reason it wouldn’t be worth it for me personally is because (1) I am very skinny and (2) I like to sleep on planes.

I think first class can best be summarized as a flying restaurant. Starting from the time you step on the plane, they give you some hot washcloths to clean your hands, then start giving you food in intervals of around 20ish minutes. In the 3.5-hour duration of the flight from ORD to LAX, I think there was only a period of about 1.5 hours or so when there was not a flight attendant present regularly to either take away dirty dishes or give me more food.

You know those snacks that they give you for free in economy? It’s usually either a small pack of cookies, peanuts, or pretzels (“well-traveled pretzels,” as my friend Ed Lam would call them). I got a “premium” version of the peanuts – I instead got a ceramic mini-bowl of assorted nuts (my bowl only had one pistachio, which I pulled out and placed right in the middle of my bowl before photographing it).

After stopping by again for a complimentary drink (which I chose Coca-Cola for my first selection), shortly afterwards, they bring you a meal. The options were either lasagna or a chicken salad; I selected lasagna. Unfortunately, there was a significant amount of turbulence during the meal, so the photo I took is a bit blurry.

After the meal, I also got some fruity cake – I believe it was raspberry – for dessert. Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph my slice of cake.

So back to the reasons why I think it personally isn’t worth it for me. Because I’m so skinny, I actually don’t even take up my entire economy seat. I’ve never had to suffer through having to sit next to someone so fat that they overflow out of their seat, but even if I did, I could actually graciously share some of my seat space with them and still sit comfortably. I’m so skinny in my seat, in fact, that I regularly prop my leg up, sit cross-legged, or fold my legs vertically (with my knees sticking up). There’s actually enough space for me to do that (even with my relatively long legs), and it helps relieve pressure on my back due to seats that don’t recline that much.

As for sleeping on planes, I have a tendency to fall asleep very well in random locations whenever I am forced to be bored and need to pass the time – I think my body feels that is an efficient use of time, as it never hurts to get some more rest and relaxation. I personally feel that a huge appeal of first class is the food service, and if you were to sleep through your entire flight in first class, you would be missing out on a lot of why first class is first class. Instead, I might as well just sit in economy and sleep the whole time, seeing as, apart from like 50 grams of pretzels, you have to pay separately for food in economy class anyway.

At the end of my experience, I juggled way too many bags at once onto my rolling suitcase and made my way out to the Ride Service area in Los Angeles International Airport, awaiting my Uber to whisk me away eastward to my new home.